This was the first caricature to appear in Vanity Fair. It transformed Carlo Pellegrini, under the nickname 'Singe' (later anglicised to 'Ape'), from an amateur entertainer of high society into a professional caricaturist. The editor Thomas Gibson Bowles, wrote admiringly of Disraeli in the accompanying text: 'Of all our political leaders I have the greatest admiration and respect by far for Mr Disraeli, for he represents the coming principle of the world - that of Personal Merit.'

Current affairs

Gladstone introduces the Irish Church Disestablishment Act, which disestablishes the Church of Ireland, disassociating it from the state and repealing the paying of tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland. Girton College is founded in Cambridge by Barbara Bodichon and Emily Davies, the first residential college for women in England; women were granted full membership to the University in 1948.

Art and science

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev invents the periodic table of elements, which arranges elements within a group in order of their atomic mass. The British scientist Mary Somerville publishes her last book On Molecular and Microscopic Science. Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir paint together in the open air at La Grenouillère, developing the Impressionist style.

International

The Suez canal opens, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea, and transforming trade routes between Europe and Asia as merchants no longer had to circumvent Africa. The canal was largely in British and French control until Egyptian nationalisation in 1956, which sparked off the international Suez crisis.Serialisation of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel of Russian society during the Napoleonic wars, War and Peace finishes.

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